[Xcb] Opensuse 11.2 missing xcb_xlib_lock

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Le mercredi 14 avril 2010 15:36:30 Hearns, John, vous avez écrit :
> > Note that due to the insanity of some build tools, sometimes
> > applications end up linking against libraries that they don't actually
> > need but their dependencies do, such as libxcb-xlib.
> > "objdump -p /path/to/application | grep NEEDED" will show you the
> > exact list of libraries the application links against.  If
> > libxcb-xlib appears
> > in that list, the application needs rebuilding; otherwise one of its
> > dependencies does.
> 
> This is a really, really dumb policy.
> So you make an upgrade from one minor number release to another and a
> vital xorg library drops a routine,
> leaving applications which were working now broken?
> Deprecate a routine by all means.

This problem typically occurs when an application has unnecessary link 
dependencies. As Josh said, this typically means it was built in a rather 
stupid way.

A properly linked Xlib application does not care whether Xlib uses libxcb-
xlib.so.0 or libxcb-xlib.so.1 or does not use XCB at all underneath. In that 
case, changing the interface provided by XCB to Xlib does not matter to 
applications, so long as the interface provided by Xlib to applications is 
unchanged.

> And what if this application is a commercial application? You might not
> have the luxury of recompiling.

Then it sucks. But you can't blame the XCB developers. I agree this is a 
rather "dumb policy", and I guess the XCD devs agree with that statement.

Your application was not linked properly, blame whoever linked it.

-- 
Rémi Denis-Courmont
http://www.remlab.net/
http://fi.linkedin.com/in/remidenis